HISTORIC PRESERVATION REVIEW BOARD STAFF REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION Historic Designation Case No. 16-19 Kingman Park Historic District All properties within a boundary formed by East Capitol Street, 19th Street, Maryland Avenue and M Street NE and the Anacostia River, including the following squares, parcels and reservations: Squares 1118, 1119, 1120, 1125, 1126, 1127, 1128, 1134, 1139, 4458, 4459, 4460, 4461, 4462, 4463, 4464, 4477, 4478, 4480, 4481, 4483, 4483E, 4484, 4486, 4495, 4506, 4514, 4515, 4516, 4517, 4518, 4522, 4523, 4525, 4526, 4527, 4528; 4549, 4550, 4558 and 4559; all lots in Parcels 149 and 160; Lot 10 in Parcel 162; and Reservations 343F and 343G Meeting Dates: January 25 and April 26, 2018 Applicant: Kingman Park Civic Association Affected Advisory Neighborhood Commissions: 5D, 6A and 7D On January 25, 2018, the Historic Preservation Review Board took up the application for the designation of a Kingman Park Historic District. The applicant, the Kingman Park Civic Association, presented the case. The Historic Preservation Office gave its report which included a series of recommendations, including reducing the extent of the district.1 The ANC and other members of the community presented testimony. At the conclusion of testimony, HPRB asked that additional research be undertaken to support the nomination and the proposed boundaries. Since that meeting, HPO has conducted additional research and analysis on the physical and social history of Kingman Park and developed a written narrative report detailing this history. At the request of the Board, particular attention has been paid to the history of businesses along Benning Road; to the evolution of racial demographics of the neighborhood; and to the buildings and architecture of Kingman Park. The Board also encouraged the community to work with the applicants and HPO to ensure that the ANC has sufficient information to evaluate the application and its implications. In response, HPO developed draft design guidelines and has distributed those to the applicant and to the ANC, and has posted them to its website. Evaluation The January 25 staff report stated that a portion of the area proposed in the application for designation as a Kingman Park Historic District meets D.C. designation Criteria B and D (and National Register Criteria A and C). Additional research provides more support for the 1 To Squares 4516, 4517, 4522 and 4523; Parcels 149 and 160; parts of Squares 4486, 4515, 4525 and 4550; and much of Reservation 343G (including various platted squares subsumed into the Langston Golf Course). 1 designation of a Kingman Park Historic District, including sufficient support for eligibility under D.C. Criterion A as well. Kingman Park meets District of Columbia Criteria A and B and National Register Criterion A for events and history, as the site of events that contributed significantly to the heritage, culture and development of the District, and for its association “with historical periods, social movements, groups, institutions, achievements, or patterns of growth and change that contributed significantly to the heritage, culture or development of the District of Columbia of the nation.” Kingman Park was developed between 1928 and the early 1950s for African Americans during a period of intense segregation in the city and nation. Its privately built single-family dwellings intended for African American homebuyers; its federally subsidized housing for working-class blacks; its school campus built for African-American elementary through high school students; Langston Golf Course; and its commercial enterprises and religious institutions provide an excellent example of a community that was developed for and nourished by African Americans during segregation. The working- and middle-class residents of Kingman Park lived together in an area of the city that was deliberately segregated from white Washington, an area that would become the scene of important events in the fight to end legally sanctioned racial segregation. Kingman Park was the site of demonstrations and picketing for better schools and the integration of playgrounds, and one source of legal challenges to “separate but equal” education. Activism in Kingman Park contributed to the integration of the city’s public playgrounds and to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Bolling v. Sharpe, a companion case to Browne v. Board of Education, arguably the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century. Bolling v. Sharpe was a lawsuit filed on behalf of five students, including lead plaintiff, twelve- year-old Spottswood Bolling, later a student at Spingarn High School. It overturned a ruling in Carr v. Corning, a suit filed on behalf of Marguerite Carr, a student at Kingman Park’s Browne Junior High School. Kingman Park also meets D.C. Designation Criterion D (Architecture and Urbanism) and National Register Criterion C, recognizing collections of properties that “embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.” Langston Terrace Dwellings and the education campus north of Benning Road are architecturally and historically significant and are both listed in the D.C. Inventory and National Register. Similarly, Langston Golf Course, previously listed in the National Register for its significance as the only golf course in the District of Columbia where African Americans could play, was designated a landmark by HPRB last month. The blocks making up the nucleus of the Kingman Park neighborhood represent a coherent and distinguishable group representative of the single-family housing developments and their commercial spines of the interwar period that define the physical growth of residential Washington. Block-long rows were executed in a variety of early twentieth-century styles, characterized by front porches and variations in cornices and rooflines. As a class and building type, they represent what was being constructed for the middle- and working-class buyers during the second quarter of the twentieth century, and collectively represent a significant and recognizable entity. As noted in the previous staff report, the Kingman Park nomination lists many accomplished individuals who lived in or were educated in the community, or who became engaged with the 2 community through civic events and activities. While such associations may not merit designation under the criteria for association with particular persons, the more important conclusion is that collectively many accomplished individuals drew formative life experiences from the neighborhood and contributed to the history of their own community and the nation in a way that forms an essential part of the Kingman Park story. This contributes to the significance of the neighborhood under the designation criteria for history. Period of Significance It is recommended that the period of significance for Kingman Park extend from 1928 to 1960. The beginning date corresponds to the construction of the first rows of houses in Kingman Park, sold to African Americans during a period of racial segregation when quality affordable housing for persons of color was artificially limited. It encompasses the subsequent wholesale development of the area including housing, businesses, schools, and recreational facilities built for and nurtured by African Americans. It extends through the 1940s and mid-1950s to include a decade of concerted protest and legal challenges to segregation culminating in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. The period of significance should extend beyond this seminal year to capture a period of desegregation and integration of public facilities, and the consolidation and reorganization of the city’s segregated dual school systems. The terminal date, 1960, thus corresponds to the end date of the period of significance for the Young, Brown, Phelps and Spingarn Educational Campus. The span also encompasses the periods of significance for both Langston Terrace Dwellings (1935-1938) and Langston Golf Course (1939-1955). Finally, the 1928 to 1960 period of significance for Kingman Park represents the period of social and physical growth of the community before forces of change resulted in the demolition of notable area buildings, such as the Langston Theater, Blow Elementary School, the Columbia Railway Depot, Rosedale Playground fieldhouse, and several blocks of dwellings in Rosedale-Isherwood. The fact that most of these stood outside the recommended boundaries is a reflection of the impact of their loss to the physical and historic integrity of the neighborhood. Boundaries As noted in the previous report and discussed at the January hearing, the proposed boundaries of the Kingman Park Historic District application encompass a broad area with several distinct sub- areas. The application proposes boundaries that extend from 19th Street on the west to the Anacostia River on the east, and from East Capitol Street on the south to Maryland Avenue on the north. These boundaries represent a large section of the area that historically formed the boundaries of the Kingman Park Civic Association, established in 1929, to represent the needs of African American residents in the area that included several different neighborhoods. At the previous hearing, HPO recommended revised boundaries to a Kingman Park Historic District,